A rejection of beauty and of American exceptionalism.
On June 19th, the long-awaited, over-budgeted, massive boondoggle of the Obama Presidential Library will be opening. If this much-anticipated event were to reveal an exemplary icon of American beauty, then perhaps it would be worth the wait. Unfortunately, the monstrosity that is the Obama Presidential Library is akin to an alien concrete cyborg spaceship that has crash landed into Jackson Park on the South Side of Chicago. An eyesore that speaks volumes about America’s rejection of beauty and of our great cultural past. For a former President to approve such a brutalist style of “art” is a national embarrassment. But that isn’t the worst outcome of this ugly disaster.
The irony, if that is the proper word to use, is the historical confluence of the Obama library and its placement in Jackson Park. 135 years ago, the Chicago architect, Daniel Burnham, assembled a group of architects and artists to help plan the upcoming World’s Columbian Exposition, otherwise known as the Chicago World’s Fair. The Exposition was organized to celebrate the 400th Anniversary of Christopher Columbus’ discovery of America and was scheduled to take place in Chicago in 1893.
The assemblage was a who’s who of American brilliance in art, architecture, and sculpture such the world has rarely seen. They were the leaders of a cultural period that became known as the “American Renaissance” who would later spark the “City Beautiful” movement across America, all amidst a Golden Age of American culture that would last until about 1918. Mostly schooled and trained at the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris, France, these architects would bring and expand their learning from Paris, incorporating Roman features in a new-classicalism and creating architectural wonders for us and the world to admire over a century later.
William Morris Hunt, Henry Van Brundt, and Charles McKim were just a few of the brilliant artists that helped design what would become known as the “White City” of 1893. The sculptor, August Saint-Gaudens, and the landscape artist Frederick Law Olmsted, designer of Central Park in Manhattan, were integral to the planning. It was Olmsted who selected Jackson Park as the location for the fair and turned the swampy muck into a beautiful garden paradise.
The Exposition furthered a vision of American exceptionalism for all the world to see. And indeed, 27 million people from around the world would visit the 1893 World’s Fair.
These millions were treated to the sight of a grand “White City” of splendor and a glimpse of the wonders of ancient antiquity that graced Carthage, Constantinople, Alexandria, Athens, and Rome. The stunning architecture of the classical world had been brought back in the New World, its splendor now alight in Chicago, the growing metropolis in the Northwest of this new nation. --->READ MORE HERE
President Donald Trump has a depressing vision for what former President Barack Obama’s new presidential library will morph into.
The president posted an AI-generated image of what he believes Obama’s library will look like in 2036 — a giant grey dumpster with a big black bag of trash spilling out of it, surrounded by homeless people and tents. Trump’s post showed the homeless milling around the ugly building with a dreary Chicago skyline in the background.
Trump’s post was captioned: “The Barack Hussein Obama Library, in 10 years, when fully matured!”
This was not the first time Trump has bashed Obama’s soon-to-open library. Just last week, Trump posted a similar picture of a huge grey garbage bin with a big bag of trash sticking out of it.
And last year, Trump said he would have loved to have helped Obama because he is a “really good builder and I build on time, on budget.” But he said Obama’s library was nothing short of a “disaster.”
Trump also said Obama’s push to make sure the library used minority-run businesses to help build it didn’t help, either.
“(Obama) said something to the effect of, ‘I only want DEI. I only want woke.’ He wants woke people to build it,” Trump added. “Well, he’s got woke people.” --->READ MORE HERE
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